I can't believe so much time has passed since we made the announcement to our friends and families that we were expecting a miracle baby!
To catch us up just a little: My pregnancy was so wonderful! I was high-risk from the beginning because of pre-existing health conditions. As a result, I had SO many appointments...lots of ultrasounds, non-stress tests, meticulous log-keeping for weekly reviews, and lots of other things to keep track of our baby boy. I had a wonderful team of doctors to help make sure our baby and I were healthy and growing the way we should! Aside from a couple of unexpected (and overall minor) things, my pregnancy went so great! I felt wonderful. I couldn't possibly explain the joy I felt during my pregnancy. Seeing his little body on the screen, feeling him kicking and moving, and listening a couple of times a week to his sweet heartbeat coming from inside of me were some of the best experiences of my life! I was told all along by my OBGYN that if I made it to 39 weeks, he didn't want me to go much passed that point since I was at a higher risk for complications that could occur later in the pregnancy. When I got to that point my doctor told me it was time to get the baby here because of some issues that weren't harmful to the baby yet, but could possibly become dangerous. He scheduled me to arrive at the hospital at 9:00pm on Monday night to begin induction. At about 12am Monday morning I began having irregular contractions. When I got to the hospital at about 10:30am I was about 9 1/2 centimeters dialated! At 2:16pm on March 11, 2013 we welcomed Grayson to the world! He was 7lbs 5oz, 20.5 inches long, and the most amazing thing I had ever seen! I loved being pregnant and am so thankful to have been able to experience such an incredible miracle as pregnancy and childbirth that was supposed to be impossible!
After considering many things about the situation and spending a lot of time in prayer, we felt that we needed to put the adoption on hold until after Grayson was born. Due to the nature of this kind of domestic adoption, it was very unlikely that a birthmom would chose to place her child with a couple who were expecting at the time, or with a couple who would have a very young child. It was recommended to us by one of the adoption agencies to wait until Grayson was 1 year old to begin again. I remember when they said that thinking of how long away that seemed! While we were ecstatic about our biological child I was carrying, our hearts still ached for the child or children we had been working to adopt! But, as we had been shown so many times, we knew God's timing is perfect.
Some people would expect that after being able to parent our biological child that our desire to adopt might not be so strong, but in fact the opposite is true. With our own son here with us, our eyes are opened even more to the reality of the millions of orphans around the world who are without a family. And so we've continued to pray and have kept our hearts open to God's timing and call. Grayson is now 10 months old and we have recently started taking the first steps to begin the process to adopt again! We have made some phone calls to one adoption agency we worked with before and to a new one we hope to begin working with this time. We have contacted the social worker from Heart-to-Home adoptions to see what steps we need to take to update our home study that has expired. In the last two weeks we have recieved and completed the beginning paperwork for the home study update. We have gotten fingerprints done, several other background checks have been completed again, physicals for both of us and Grayson have been done, and our home study visit took place earlier today! At this point we are waiting for one letter from HR where Tyler works. Once that is done and sent our home study update should be almost complete.
Once our home study is complete, we plan to work with two adoption agencies. We will begin the application process with the new agency and send our updated home study to one of the agencies we worked with before. Soon we will begin creating new family profiles that will be presented to birthmothers who are looking for adoptive couples to place children with. Then we will go from there...
Throughout the last several years we have been so grateful for your support and prayers through our issues with infertitlity, to beginning the adoption process, and then through the birth of our biological child. We hope that you will join us in praying for our adoption as we begin again. There are many things you can specifically pray for at this time. Please pray for the decisions that have to made at this time regarding the agencies we will be working with. Finances are a big part of this decision and process. We want to be faithful that God will provide the means needed to adopt how and when He plans, and at the same time we want to make the decisions that will allow us to be responsible with the finances that will be required at different times throughout the process. Since we are beginning again, a lot of the fees that we have right now are ones we paid before (background checks, application fees, home study updates, creating new family profiles, etc.) and need to be done again. Please also pray for our patience during this time and that we always remember that God is in control. This time around is different for obvious reasons. The timeline for a completed adoption could be significantly longer than it would've been for us before. When birthmoms are looking for families to place children with, couples without children will be picked first, then couples with other adopted children, and couples who have biological children are often picked last. Since Grayson and I are blonde, we are told that will also cause us to be picked even later. Even once we are active with the adoption agencies it is likely to take several years to be matched with a child. This can be discouraging and overwhelming to think about. God has proven to us already that we don't always see or understand His plans clearly, but that His timing is perfect. Even though we can be impatient we know that God already knows the child we are to adopt and when we will adopt him or her. Pray that we will follow Him faithfully during this time, trusting that He is leading the way, no matter how long it may take.
We are overwhelmed and yet so excited to be moving forward with our adoption at this time! We are so thankful for the unbelievable support that our friends and family have been to us the past several years and are so excited about the day we will be able to tell our child about how you all helped us to bring him or her home! Thank you!
